Silicon Valley's safety net prevents the creation of truly great founders
William Hockey · How to bet on yourself (without venture capital) · Invest Like The Best · Mar 17, 2026 · at 32:40
William Hockey, co-founder of Plaid and founder of Column, critiques the standardized venture playbook and accelerator culture for eliminating the existential risk founders need to build great companies.
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“We've created this, like, incredible environment in Silicon Valley that it's really safe to start a company. And there's, like, a playbook, and you go through YC, and assuming you're, like, moderately competent and went to the right high school and college, you're gonna get, like, a three million dollar seed round. And worst case scenario, you can, like, you know, you can go work at, like, a great company as an engineer, and, like, you'll be, like, have a founder on your resume, and, like, life is good. And that has created a lot of value. But I'm not quite sure it's created a lot of great founders and a lot of great companies because there is no risk in that proposition.”
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